


improvements

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/Protoype
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 11:51:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6152810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last time Jekyll was summoned, he was Berserker. This time...</p>
<hr/>
<p>A small snapshot of some regrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	improvements

Jekyll's (new) Master takes photos for fun. He always says, head bowed a little in proper embarrassment, that he's not very good. (And he isn't). There's usually a blur to the photo, a finger in the frame — or the photo isn't focused, the camera is tilted. They're not good pictures.

But Jekyll's Master hangs them up anyway. They cover the entire wall of one of the rooms. Images of Fuyuki, France, Rome Okeanos, London. Every Servant that has passed through the summoning circle and stood by his side and even the ones that they only met briefly.

"Memories are important," his Master says with a laugh, catching Jekyll staring at the pictures. "I'm terrible with a camera, but memories are proof that we were once here, right? If there's one of everyone, then even if we never meet again, we'll all remember. Well, or something like that."

It's so earnest and openhearted. 

There's something he can't quite remember, a howling void, an icy blackness, a memory that is no longer there. He smiles, instead, faintly.

"I agree. You're. . . very thoughtful."

His Master raises his hands in protest, looking embarrassed. "Ah! No, no, sorry — it's because I'm an airhead, you know? If I don't put everyone up, I'm certain I'll forget something important."

(At the end of a Grail War, the Servants vanish as well.)

(If a Servant's Master is killed, in all likelihood, the Servant will vanish.)

(If the Master is killed, )

* * *

Tatsumi Kitano had not yet had his first kiss. It was something many boys his age had already had — or bragged about. The kind of swagger that someone might acquire over summer break. This time, I've returned a man! They might say. Or lean across the gap between desks and nudge Tatsumi, ask his opinion on a girl's lips.

He thought, perhaps, he might confess to one of his classmates. He liked her, well enough. She was pretty and nice and he could see himself with her at the movies, sharing lunch. It was benign.

He had a B in most of his classes, an A in one and a C in another. He was going to have to take summer lessons, again. It was not uncommon at his school. He was exceedingly average in every parameter that mattered for his life as a student.

And so, his first kiss is entirely unexpected.

He's read books with kisses, comics and seen movies. He expected something a little like the movies — passionate, with strings in the background. Or maybe like in the comics where time came to a stop and he was surrounded by petals and soft warm light.

Instead, he leaned over, put his hands on Berserker's shoulders and said in a voice that he meant to sound very brave but instead wavered and came out in a rush: "I want to kiss you."

"Excuse me?" His Servant asked.

Tatsumi, because he was young and one of the only ways he knew how to go about life was to rush forward with his feelings revealed, shouted: "I want to kiss you!"

It's Jekyll who leaned forward first, but stayed just out of reach. "Are you certain?" He asked.

"I said it! And — I meant it." Tatsumi heard his own voice get louder and then get softer. His heart beat too fast and then seemed to slow to nothing. It honestly felt a little like he was dying.

"Okay." Jekyll answered, then continued. "I'm sorry, I meant to say that with more enthusiasm. It isn't as though I am not — "

All Tatsumi had needed to hear was _okay_. He crashed forward, leaning forward and pulling Jekyll closer and it was not a very good kiss at all. Their faces collided and their lips bumped, bruised and in the middle of it Tatsumi had shut his eyes tightly.

The kiss was so brief that when it was over (instantly) he let go and threw his hands up into the air. "Agh! Sorry! That was bad!"

"One of the best things about people is that they can keep improving. The best side of people can keep trying to get it right." Jekyll said and Tatsumi envied the calm in his voice. But when he opened his eyes, he found his Servant blushing.

They learned together again and for Tatsumi Kitano's second kiss — well, it was much better than the first.

* * *

"Hold out your hand." His Master is beckoning, so Jekyll goes and raises his right hand. His Master lines up their fingers and presses their hands lightly together. "There!"

". . . ah, sorry?" Jekyll asks, completely bewildered.

"Our hands are about the same size." His Master grins. "I wouldn't have thought that I'd have the same hand size as a Heroic Spirit!"

"Well, most of us were once human. . . and honestly, I'm —" Jekyll pauses. Then he continues on, "It's. . . well. I'm not quite a hero. . ."

His Master laces their fingers together and swings their joined hands. Jekyll can see him look up and away, but still smiling. He's too lighthearted, too naive and too open. It worries Jekyll, his courage frays every time he thinks of his Master.

"You're hero enough to me. It's about doing your best and improving until you can be someone that you're proud of, right?" His Master turns back towards him and winks dramatically. "No one becomes a hero in a day."

Once, it would have been nice to be a hero, Jekyll thinks.

"Ah, well. . . it's more that "I" am not really to be. . . trusted. . ."

"You've protected me this far, I think you're building trust." His Master shrugs then and releases Jeykyll's hand. "In fact, I trust you."

"That's too much to say. . . Master. But perhaps. . . it's just that given the situation. . ." He fumbles for what he wants to say. Relationships are transient. All men are sinners. Regrets are poisonous. Someday, this too will end.

His Master seems to sense that and leans forward, their foreheads almost touching. He says: "No way! You're one of my most dependable assassins!"

* * *

Jekyll had a memory that he is certain did not happen. He was long dead — a Servant couldn't exist in the world without a mana source, without their Master and his Master, far more dead before him. But still the memory persisted.

They met again in the twilight in the same woods where they had died.

Jekyll rushed to him, put his hands on Tatsumi's shoulders and couldn't hold back any of his words. All of his regrets spilled out and all of the secret feelings a Servant shouldn't have (a week isn't enough to change a person, it shouldn't be enough to).

He kissed him, and that's when he knew. Tatsumi's lips, that did move to return the kiss, slowly and stiffly, were cold. The tenuous connection between them as Master and Servant had been severed long ago but Jekyll should have known from the angle of Tatsumi's shoulders, bent from something other than relief or fear. 

"Don't." Tatsumi said.

"Don't go."

"It's no good."

"Don't go."

And, the worst of them all, Tatsumi reached for him, "We can't win."

Jekyll remembered crumbling then. Whatever small amount of energy that had drawn him back to Tatsumi's body broke and shattered and he dissipated. Tatsumi's hands grasped at the air as he dematerialized.

"I don't want to —"

The memory that persists leaves blood on his hands.

* * *

All of his skills are useless, as he is. But as he becomes Hyde, his reason is useless. Jekyll is always seized with the terror that the next time he sees his Master (as himself) that he'll have blood on his hands and his Master will be dead.

This time, when he regains his sanity, his Master is standing next to him with a wide swath of blood across his white uniform. There's a little blood on one cheek, just under his eye.

"— no, Master — "

"Huh? This? No, no, no, it's not mine!" His Master waves his hands and then grabs Jekyll's hands and raises them up. He's still holding his knife, and the blade trails rivulets of blood and viscera. "Hyde got every single last one of them. I was just seeing if you were okay."

"When I — when it's out you shouldn't be near — " Jekyll protests, and even though he's a Heroic Spirit he can't find the strength to wrench his hands away, or to let go of the knife. "A detestable evil. . ."

"Huh? Don't you remember what I told you before?" 

_Let's do it together, as heroes of justice!_

". . . ah? Sorry?"

His Master shakes his head, pries the knife out of Jekyll's hand and then laces their fingers together. He does so with careful purpose, deliberately slow. "We're a team, you and me."

". . . like heroes of justice." Jekyll says faintly.

His Master looks surprised and then grins and winks. "Yeah, that sounds good. Heroes of justice. We're going to save the world!"

"It's nice. . . that we're creating more happy memories." 

"You forgot the most important part!" The click of a camera. "We're making them together!"

This too was not a very good picture. The camera is crooked, and Jekyll's face is almost not in the frame entirely. They're both covered in way too much blood but his Master is grinning and they're standing close to each other, holding hands.

* * *

Tatsumi Kitano was proud of his photography, it was one of the things that he excelled at.

* * *

Jekyll asks, as an afterthought and only after an awkward silence has fallen between them: ". . . would you consider me. . . your friend?"

His Master thinks on it. He chews his lower lip, puts on a show of tapping his foot and frowning. Then shrugging. "Of course! But what makes you ask that?"

Jekyll is reassured, because the way that his (new) Master stands doesn't overlap with any memories he has. Maybe it's the training at Chaldea, or the confidence gained from numerous battles, but he seems older than his (old) Master. 

"Ah. . . nothing. Just the relationship between Master and Servant. . ." 

"It's different, for a lot of people 'friend' doesn't mean 'I trust you with my life', huh!"

". . . something like that." Jekyll's reply is weak. He expects his Master to pounce and pry, to investigate that kind of response. Not that he ever has before, but Jekyll continues to expect for his sins to be lined up and shown off. As if Hyde is not enough.

"I trust you with my life." His Master says, immediately. And all of Jekyll's reassurance disappears. 

(If a Servant's Master is killed, in all likelihood, the Servant will vanish.)

(If the Master is killed, )

"I . . . this time. . . I want to win." Jekyll can only reply, helplessly.


End file.
